Bug Description

Pidgin is just not visible. It shows on the message menu, it whos on Unity and it even shows on the global Menu, it's just... not on screen. This problem is happening often but i don't know as a result of what, since it works upon launching, but may not upon relaunching. After Pidgin put together the information for thisre port, the window shoed up again but disappeared from Unity, although currently working.

I'm not actually sure. The behaviour is very similar, but Pidgin is not listed in the startup Applications and this happens after oppening it at any given point, not necessairly after opening it on startup.

Niether have i tried that right button click solution or tested the eprsistence of the bug upon restart, I will as soon as the bug repeats itself and get back to you :D

Either way, I think it's the same Bug, just mine is a little more extended (happening also when not in the startup Applications).

I've found a simple solution on this: I've quit using Pidgin. Unity in general has a whole bunch of similar issues with windows not showing up, launcher context menu not showing etc. No one seems to care.

I have the same issue as described by previous posters, in fact I use the same work-around as marc-heinz. This bug must have come from a long negligence since it truly is as old as Unity itself.
It occured to me when using 11.04 (clean install), 11.10 (both clean and upgrade) and 12.04 (clean install).
It's hard to provide a log of some kind since this is more of a GUI defect.

The fact that this bug is such a big problem, affects all Ubuntu pidgin users, and still isn't fixed, after almost a year, completely baffles me. No, I will not change to empathy because it's simply daunting from a functional perspective. If that was the intended underlying motivation to not fix this, it's just plain awkward.

Since at the pace of things, this isn't going away any time soon (yey for quality control), I accept suggestions on a non-QT instant messenger that has a decent behavior on Ubuntu. Or perhaps some indication as to whether this happens on other distros, since a fresh change might be the way to go.

Hi guys,
Do you still have the problem with Pidgin? I think I’ve found the solution; it’s simple:

Go to Pidgin Preferences -> Interface -> System Tray Icon, and choose ALWAYS for “Show system tray icon”.
Now if you can set Pidgin as a startup application, there will be no problem with opening the buddy list. In this situation, I recommend you to UNCHECK “Use status from last exit at startup” in Preferences -> Status/Idle and preferably set it to offline.

(If you don’t set Pidgin as a startup application, you should click on the icon once to start the application – which shows a triangle beside the icon in the messaging menu – and click again to open the window.)

I tried more than 5 times on 12.04 and the window is shown every time without any problem.

I still run into this issue almost every time I start 12.04. My workaround is to quit and relaunch Pidgin.

With all due respect, Ali Najafi, your proposal is not a solution, it's a workaround. Launching Pidgin on startup or showing a system tray icon are not considered desirable behaviors by many users. If they work for you, that's fantastic, but this workaround ignores the primary use case:

You’re absolutely right about solution and workaround. Account this for my weak English.

Moreover, I must add about “system tray icon” that no icons will be displayed in 12.04 menu, but you won’t need to quit it. I myself did’t set it as startup, just since I’ve enabled tray icon which changed nothing in appearance, I don’t need to quit anymore; however sometimes I need to relaunch (without quitting).

This is great for me, because I lost some offline messages when quitting to relaunch.

This seriously needs to be fixed ASAP. It is ridiculous the hoops that users of this software have to go through in order for it to function basically. If a user logs in and is sent a message, clicking on the tray icon only flips the message and there is no way to even access the Tools > Preferences menu. Only the conversation menu is accessible which only has Conversation and Options (neither of which supplies any help in opening the Buddy Menu)

Pidgin has been working for me (with the env variable workaround for MS servers), but now suddenly it fails to display a window. Debug (-d) and strace seem to indicate the program is otherwise working. When I Ctrl-C, the window appears to flicker on screen before terminating. While it is running, the window also shows up in xlsclients. I'm not using Unity (just a simple XMonad setup), so if this is indeed the same problem, it's proabably not Unity-related. Ubuntu 13.04.

from '0' to '1' also brought the window back. I guess this is a Gnomism, Pidgin isn't expected to work without some supporting things running alongside it, panels or whatever, so it starts up "minimized", with no way of opening the running applicaiton without a panel or dock or something.

as an evangelist of open source software, i find ongoing issues like this really discouraging. how can i possibly argue that open source operating systems are better when i can find record of this issue dating back to 2008 in a simple google search. it probably was reported even before that.